CHAPTER EIGHT
THE BOW IS DRAWN BACK and the bowman tries to hold it as taut as he can and then when he is satisfied with the position of his prey he can let the arrow loose. There is a fierce strange moment when the arm can no longer hold the pulled string, and nothing will do but to let it fly, so the bowman must know all the staging posts of his task, or make a bloody hames of it. I was just pondering along these lines as we went in fairly good order in the hoofprints of our Crow scouts. That Caught-His-Horse-First was a wily man and it would not be any picnic to find him and bring revenge to his soul. The sergeant thought it only right that as many of the old section who had found the killed men so many seasons before should go that day to find the village. Caleb Booth was there as the Jesus among us risen again. In the meanwhile Caleb had grown a big moustache and had a little baby son by a pretty Sioux woman, Oglala Sioux too, so I guess that was strange. I guess love laughs at history a little.
The year just gone had wore away at the sergeant and even if we were young and knew nothing we knew it was not only age was eating away at him. He is as gaunt now like the spike of a dead tree sticking up from the land and all his old measure of flesh and even his violent talk had withered away somewhat. The man I had took to be just something of a monster and even a wicked man in his way was grown different in my eyes. He was as rough as the Black Hills in his demeanour and his brain was full of nothing but orders, drinking, and tobacco. He never said a thing that wasn’t pickled with cusses. But that were just the front side of him. Around the back was a differing aspect, I won’t say roses and gardens, but a sort of queer quietness that I had come to admire. And relish even, so that I could quite easily find myself seeking out his company. He drilled us along the boiling summer ground as if he wished the American sunlight to burn us away like leaves in a bonefire. He was harsh and cruel when you mistook an order or wheeled right when you should of wheeled left. I seen him hit troopers with the back of his sabre and I seen him one time shoot at the heels of a erring trooper so that that man was obliged to dance and caterwaul to survive. But he was a handbook of war and war’s actions and he had never led a company to their detriment. And even though he were not the culprit for the massacre of our companions a year back he took himself to be so by some degree and his thought of revenge was a calculation to put back things that was amiss in his estimation in their place.
That he was a filthy bad singer I have said before and only the memory of his vile tones forces me to say it again and I do pray that in heaven the singing will be confined to the angels.
A day and a night passes and the sergeant keeps us moving and is against sleep. Sergeant thinks we is crossing so far northwest the darned Crows must be bringing us home to Yellowstone. That is a strange country we often hear stories of. By morning of the second day we begin to move into forest and the land is rising and the sergeant robustly rebukes the Crows. You the craziest damn wolves I ever followed, says the sergeant. How you expect me to bring this gun over that pile of rocks? So the field gun is left to follow with a dozen men who will need to raise it foot by foot on pulleys and all kinds of damn hard work in the sun. There is a Negro called Boethius Dilward driving the mules that pull the gun and he is said to be the best damn mule-drover in the regiment, but still. Mules like flat ground just like human beings do. Boethius Dilward shakes his head at the Crows too. You do your best, Boethius, says the sergeant, and I apologise for this stupidity. I will bring that gun up, says Boethius, sir, never you fear. Just see that you go along quiet as a doe, you hear, Boethius? Yes, sir, and I will, he says. Goddamn, says the sergeant.
Just four or five hours later we begin to see a country whose beauty penetrates our bones. I say beauty and I mean beauty. Oftentimes in America you could go stark mad from the ugliness of things. Grass that goes for a thousand miles and never a hill to break it. I ain’t saying there ain’t beauty on the plains, well there is. But you ain’t long travelling on the plains when you begin to feel clear loco. You can rise up out of your saddle and sort of look down on yourself riding, it’s as if the stern and relentless monotony makes you die, come back to life, and die again. Your brain is molten in its bowl of bones and you just seeing atrocious wonders everywhere. The mosquitoes have your hide for supper and you are one hallucinating lunatic then. But now in the far distance we see a land begin to be suggested as if maybe a man was out there painting it with a huge brush. He is choosing a blue as bright as falling water for the hills and there is a green for the forests so green you think it might be used for to make ten million gems. Rivers burn through it with a enamelled blue. The huge fiery sun is working at burning off all this splendid colour and for ten thousand acres of the sky it is mighty successful. A stagger of black cliffs just nearby rise sheer and strange from the molten greens. Then a wide band of red striked across the sky and the red is the red of them trousers Zouave soldiers wear. Then a colossal band of the blue of bird eggs. God’s work! Silence so great it hurts your ears, colour so bright it hurts your staring eyes. A vicious ruined class of man could cry at such scenes because it seems to tell him that his life is not approved. The remnant of innocence burns in his breast like a ember of the very sun. Lige Magan looks at me, turning in his saddle. He’s laughing.
That’s a sweet country, he says.
I’ll say it is, I said.
Why don’t you say that to me? says Starling Carlton at his other side. I can apply an appreciation of a view just as good as Trooper McNulty.
Ain’t it just glorious though, Starling, ain’t it? says Lige, like he don’t know that Starling is coming at that one sideways. But he does know. Then Starling gives way and decides for the sake of friendship to follow Lige into that brand of easy talk.
Man, says Starling, it is. It just is.
Then Starling looks real happy. Then Lige does too.
Goddamn, says the sergeant, keep quiet back there, goddamn.
Yes, sir, says Starling.
It is approaching dusk and that same God is pulling a ragged black cloth slowly across his handiwork. The Crows return in a flurry of dust and haste, the village is only a quarter mile ahead, the sergeant bids us dismount and now we are in the awkward position of being clumsy-footed Europeans near a village of geniuses when it comes to tracking and vigilance. We got to be better men than we are for all that night, and the horses got to be quiet which ain’t always in the rulebook of horses, and what’s more we hope and pray that gun will come up in the darkness silent and not sound like the seven visions of Ezekiel. Cook parcels us out his dried provisions and we sit like a homeless people on our hunkers eating them not daring to light fires against the challenge of the night. No one says too much and what is said is only light-hearted and bantering because we want to preserve our advantage over fear. Fear like a bear in the cave of banter.
We’re two nights without sleeping and now as the dependable orb of the sun makes a show again on the horizon our bones are aching and our minds are strange to us and cold. About four in the night by the sergeant’s pocket watch the gun came creaking and crashing up behind us and the sergeant sent our full company back to carry it up into position. That was damnable crazy work. You got to dismantle the wheels and the carriage, take off the gun, and carry the weight of ten corpses through thorny scrub and rocky ground. Then the powder, the big bullets, and the percussion caps like Brobdingnag versions of what serves for our muskets. He brings the mules and horses back a mile, Boethius. It’s just us on our pins then, Shanks’ pony. We can hear the damn Sioux singing and calling like they was a hundred children bereft of their mothers. It just ain’t a sound to make your mind easy. I would not be the only fella wondering what in hell they was doing there. Revenge of course, but was this any way to take that revenge? Damn foolishness whichever way you looked at it. But no one says a word. We remember the sergeant standing alone at the site of the massacre and we remember him cutting off the noses. Caleb Booth no doubt remembers other things since he was there to see them. He lay alone in
a tent with all his comrades dead nearby but he knew we would come. He said he knew we would and we did. Something binds us close in all that. So we work in the dark, stumbling about like drunkards, readying the gun, and the sergeant whispers his other orders, and how we are to form in a sickle moon shape so as to cover as much of the village as we can with fire after the gun has done its worst. Crows say there is a deep dark ravine behind the tents so we reckon we can cover the runaways left and right. The squaws will try to get the children away and the men will cover them till they reach some safety. If Caught-His-Horse-First is true to character he will fight as fierce as a mountain cat. There is no easiness in what we are doing. If the Sioux get the upper hand we are all food for hogs. There won’t be no mercy anyhow because we know we ain’t seen no sign of mercy beforehand.
Sergeant ain’t no beginner and he has placed his gun on somewhat higher ground by using his good judgement even in the dark and that seems right when the weak golden light of morning fills the land. Its beauty now feels treacherous and our hearts are sick with fear. We can’t seem to warm up none and yet we are moving about with vigour and the sergeant’s skinny shape walks over here, walks back there, and he whispers some instructions, he makes signs with his hands and arms, he is never still. The smoke of new fires rises from the Indian camp and it is suddenly as if we are hell’s men wandered into paradise.
So what is this sorrow then, this weight of sorrow? Pressing down on us. The gun is primed, rammed, and ready. The gunner is Hubert Longfield Ohio born. One half of his long thin face is blue from an old accident in the field. Guns blow up when they like, you never do know. He does all the work on the gun like he was dancing a queer old dance. He positions and pushes and opens and sets. He stands off with the firing string in his blue-mottled paws. Now he awaits the order, now he wants it. There’s two gunners ready to supply again. Every face of the watching troopers is turned towards them, a lean long moon of men. Must be six o’clock now and all the babes and the children of the camp are astir, and the squaws are at the kettles. We can see clear as paper cut-outs two buffalo skins stretched black and stiff on wooden frames. God knows where they found those buffalo, they must of ranged far afield for them. Now the skins are drying at the pace of drying skins, which is slower than a little brook of time. The wigwams are mightily decked and there’s none of the wretchedness you might begin to see in wigwams as you go back towards the east. Out here nothing much of us has touched them. The men will gladly take whisky if they find it, but they will drink everything they find in a sitting. A Sioux man will lie dead drunk for a day but the following day he will be Homer’s Hector again. These people before us made that treaty with the colonel but once the sorry articles of the treaty was neglected they went back to what they knew. If they was waiting on government victuals they starved.
The sergeant whispers his order like the word of a lover and Hubert Longfield pulls on his string and the gun roars. It is the roar of one hundred lions in a small room. We would gladly put our hands over our ears but our muskets are raised and trained along the line of the wigwams. We are watching for the rat-run of the survivors. There is a stretch of time as long as creation and I can hear the whizzing of the shell, a spinning piercing sound, and then it makes its familiar thud-thud and pulls at the belly of heaven and spreads its mayhem around it, the sides of wigwams torn off like faces, the violent wind of the blast toppling others flat, revealing people in various poses of surprise and horror. There is murder and death immediately. There are maybe thirty tents and just this one shell has made a black burning cancer in the middle. Squaws are gathering up children of all sizes and looking wildly about as if they don’t know what direction will be safety. Then the sergeant gives an order in full voice as our calling card has now been delivered and we fire the muskets off in a line and our bullets go viciously into wood, hides, and flesh. Straight away a dozen squaws go down and their children cling to them or try to flee. By now twenty braves are running about with their guns, and now Hubert is fixed to fire again and fires. A long segment of the camp is torn away like you might obliterate a painting. As if our bullets were only weary and weak we seem to wound twice as many as we kill. There’s many staggering about, clutching their wounds, crying out, but now the braves seem to have done their calculations and try to bring off the squaws and children towards the back of the village. Fire, fire, men, calls our sergeant, and we reload like lunatics and fire. Powder, ball, ram, cap, cock, and fire. Powder, ball, ram, cap, cock, and fire. Over and over, and over and over Death at his frantic task in the village, gathering souls. We work in our lather of strange sorrow, but utterly revengeful, fiercely so, soldiers of intentful termination, of total annihilation. Nothing less will slake our thirst. Nothing else will fill our hunger. To this story of our dead comrades we are writing an end on the hot wind of summer. As we fire, we laugh. As we fire, we cry out. As we fire, we weep. Leap away, Hubert, pull the string. Cock an ear, Boethius, back with the horses. Raise up your musket, John Cole, fire and fire again. Blue line of men, look lively, for Death is a fickle friend.
Sergeant gives the order to fix our bayonets and forward we rush to strike through anyone that shell and bullet has gave deceitful quarter to. If the braves have made a stand we ain’t hardly noticed it. Filled with revengeful force it’s like no bullet could harm us. Our fears are burned off in the smelter of battle leaving only a murderous courage. Now we might be celestial children out to rob the apples in the orchards of God, fearless, fearless, fearless.
Our sorrow spiralling to heaven. Our courage spiralling to heaven. Our disgrace entangled in it like sorrow and courage was so much briars.
The Sioux men are hunkered down behind whatever will protect them but once we reach the limits of their village they rise up without hesitation and with bare breast charge against our approach. Each of us has one charge in his musket that must be preserved for a sure hit if there be ever such a thing in this kind of raggle-taggle battle. I see Caleb Booth in the corner of my eye fall in the Indian fusillade. Then they are pulling knives from their waists and hollering and there is a sort of mad joyous desperation in it that kindles a crazy fire in the heart. We are not lovers rushing to embrace but there is a sense of terrifying union none the less, as if courage yearns to join with courage. I cannot say otherwise. No fighter on earth as brave as a Sioux brave. They have their squaws and kindred sheltered and now at the last desperate moment they must risk all to defend them. But the shells have done terrible damage in the camp. Now I can see plain the broken bodies and the blood and the horrible butcher shop of carnage that those bursting metal flowers have manufactured. Young girls are strewn about like the victims of a terminous dance. It is as if we have stopped the human clock of the village, that’s what I were thinking. The hands have stuck and the hours will be no more. The braves come on like perfect demons, but I will allow magnificent, keenly storming. There’s so much blood in our hearts they might be bombs also. Now we be wrestling and falling and rising, we are thirty soldiers against six or seven, all that our bombs and bullets have missed. These are fierce men with the bitterness of useless treaties in their bellies. Even in the flash and spark of battle I can see how famished they are, the bronze bodies long-muscled and scrawned. We kill these men by sheer weight of numbers. Now only the sheltering squaws and such remain. The sergeant, wheezing like a wind-broke horse, halts the ruckus of death and bids two men go down to the ravine and round up the women. What’s in his head to do that we do not know for the women rush up from where they have laid in their forms of grass and with shrieks as sharp as blades charge against the startled soldiers, and they are engulfed in a frenzy of stabbing. Others of us rush over and kill those women. Now we have four, five of us dead, and all of them. Fearfully the lip of the ravine is broached. We look down into its sheer stony depths and there in a nest are a butcher’s dozen of youngsters, their faces gazing up, as if they are praying to see their people returning for them. But this cannot be.
Now the se
rgeant is blowing smoke because the Crow scouts say that Caught-His-Horse-First ain’t among the dead. What we done is we have killed his family, two wives included. Also his only son seemingly. The sergeant looks pleased at this but John Cole whispers to me he ain’t so sure. Sergeant ain’t always so bright about things, he says, but just to me. The sergeant is of a mind to throw the children into the ravine but Lige Magan and John Cole suggest it’s just better to round them up. Bring them back to the fort where they can be tended. The little school will have them, they say. I know without any degree of doubt that they are thinking of the major and Mrs Neale. All that has passed has been without the major’s say-so and the coming of Mrs Neale has placed a caution in every man’s soul. I am only saying how it were. The sergeant can kill as many braves as he likes but there will be already a reckoning for the squaws. Sergeant can say Goddamn as often as he likes but it’s true. Goddamn Easterners know nothing, he says. Goddamn. No one speaks, we’re just waiting for orders. Starling Carlton don’t say a word, he’s kneeling on the ravine edge with his eyes closed. The sergeant’s narrowed face looks sullen and angry but he tells us to round up the children. We’re so tired we can’t understand how we will return to the fort. The blood is intact in our bodies but we feel like we are bleeding into the earth. There’s a few dead troopers to bury, couple of fellers from Missouri. A young feller from Massachusetts who was assistant muleteer to Boethius Dilward. And Caleb Booth. Sergeant rallies hisself and puts all vexation aside and doesn’t fail to say a few uplifting words. That’s why we still obeyed the sergeant. Just when you think he was going to hell by the highroad he shown he ain’t the worst.